About Us
Download our brochure (PDF, 2.4mb).
Who We Are
The Office of the Historian is staffed by professional historians who are experts in the history of U.S. foreign policy and the institutional history of the Department of State. Our historians possess unparalleled research experience in State Department and other government records. The Office is directed by The Historian of the U.S. Department of State.
What We Do
The Office of the Historian is responsible, under law, for the preparation and publication of the official documentary history of U.S. foreign policy in the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series. The FRUS series presents the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions. The series began in 1861 and now comprises more than 550 individual publications. FRUS publications contain historical documents from the Departments of State and Defense, the White House, National Security Council, Intelligence Community, and other agencies across the national security establishment. Our historians compiling FRUS have full and complete access to records in the Presidential libraries, the National Archives, and Department and agency repositories.
The Office prepares historical and institutional studies for Department principals that provide essential context, evaluate how and why policies evolved, identify precedents, and derive lessons learned.
Our Outreach Activities
Our Office provides information to the American people about the Department and its history; U.S. foreign relations and resources to conduct research on Department records; and responds to content-specific questions about FRUS series.
How to Access Our Materials
In addition to a full text archive of the Foreign Relations series, our website includes valuable encyclopedic content on the history of U.S. relations with states around the world, and a database of the Department’s principal officers and chiefs of mission.
In keeping with the Open Government Directive’s principle of transparency, participation, and collaboration as the cornerstone of an open government, all of the content and code on this site is available for free download. The core repositories are available at HistoryAtState on GitHub. Follow our progress, fork our code, file issues, and send us your pull requests. The hsg-project repository contains all instructions to install a complete copy of the history.state.gov website on your own computer. Please visit our Open Government page to learn more about our contributions to data.gov.